NEAL R. GROSS

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Centers for Disease Control

National Institute for Occupational Safety and 

Health

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health

123rd Meeting

Tuesday, June 26, 2018

The meeting convened telephonically at 11:00 a.m., 

Eastern Time, Ted Katz, Designated Federal Official, 

presiding.
2

Members Present:

Henry Anderson, Member

Josie Beach, Member

Bradley P. Clawson, Member

R. William Field, Member

David Kotelchuck, Member

Richard Lemen, Member

James E. Lockey, Member

Wanda I. Munn, Member

David B. Richardson, Member

Genevieve S. Roessler, Member

Phillip Schofield, Member

Loretta R. Valerio, Member

Paul L. Ziemer, Member

Ted Katz, Designated Federal Official

Registered and/or Public Comment Participants:

Nancy Adams, NIOSH Contractor

Isaf Al-Nabulsi, DOE

Bob Barton, SC&A

Ron Buchanan, SC&A

Chris Crawford, DOL

Dory Grace

Stu Hinnefeld, DCAS

Jeff Kotsch, DOLO

Greg Lewis, DOE

Jenny Lin Naylor, HHS

Jim Neton, DCAS

Lavon Rutherford, DCAS

John Stiver, SC&A

Tim Taulbee, DCAS
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Contents

Centers for Disease Control National Institute for 

Occupational Safety and Health Advisory Board on 

Radiation and Worker Health 123rd Meeting 

Tuesday, June 26, 2018 1

Roll Call/Welcome 4

Special Exposure Cohort Petition Status 

Update 4

Update from Work Groups and Subcommittees

5

ORNL Update 6

Argonne East Update 6

Dose Reconstruction Review 

Subcommittee Update 7

Metals and Controls Update 8

Dose Reconstruction Review 

Subcommittee Update Continued 8

Subcommittee on Procedures Update 9

Plans for the August 2018 Board Meeting 12

Adjourn 15
4

Proceedings

(11:03 a.m.)

Roll Call/Welcome

Mr. Katz: Welcome, everybody. This is the Advisory 

Board on Radiation and Worker Health. This is our 

teleconference meeting to plan for our August face to 

face meeting, essentially. There is an agenda posted 

on the Board web site, but it's really very simple and 

there are no materials, so I don't think anyone needs 

to go there.

Roll call. There are no conflict of interest agenda 

items, so we don't need to deal with that. And I know 

most of the attendance, so I'll run through the 

attendance.

(Roll call.)

Mr. Katz: Okay. And just let me remind everyone to 

mute your phones except for when you're speaking. 

Press *6 to mute your phone if you don't have a mute 

button and *6 to take your phone off of mute again. 

And please no one put their call on hold.

Okay then. That does it for the preliminaries, and we 

can go to LaVon with SEC petition status updates.

Special Exposure Cohort Petition Status Update

Mr. Rutherford: All right. Thanks, Ted. For the 

August Advisory Board meeting we will be presenting 

an addendum for SEC 188 to Sandia National Lab, 

Albuquerque and we'll address at least a portion of 

the remaining years. We will also be presenting the 

De Soto Avenue petition, and that's for 1965 to 1995. 

Those are the only two new petitions that we will be 

presenting. And that's it. And I was going to say 

there will be updates probably by the Work Groups 

on open petitions, but those are the only new ones. 

Mr. Katz: Thanks, LaVon. Any questions from Board 

Members for LaVon?
5

Member Ziemer: This is Ziemer. What was the 

number on the De Soto petition?

Mr. Rutherford: Oh, geez. That's the -- one of the 

newest petitions. I actually didn't write the number 

down, Dr. Ziemer. I will get it here in a second.

Member Ziemer: Oh, okay.

Mr. Rutherford: 246, but I will --

Member Ziemer: 246?

Mr. Rutherford: I will verify that. 

Mr. Katz: Yeah, it is 246.

Mr. Rutherford: Yes. Okay.

Member Ziemer: Okay. Thank you.

Member Munn: Thank you, LaVon. We've always 

appreciated those brief reports.

(Laughter.)

Mr. Rutherford: Wanda, I appreciate you, and I will 

miss you on this board.

Member Munn: You be good to yourself.

Mr. Rutherford: You, too.

Mr. Katz: Okay. Very good. No other questions for 

LaVon?

(No audible response.)

Update from Work Groups and Subcommittees

Mr. Katz: Okay. Updates from Work Groups or 

Subcommittees, as necessary. Just chime in.

Member Roessler: Okay. Am I off mute?

Mr. Katz: Yes.
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ORNL Update

Member Roessler: Thank you. This is Gen. I didn't 

hear anybody else speaking, so I can give an update 

on ORNL.

Mr. Katz: Yeah, please do.

Member Roessler: Okay. On March 29th the Board 

received the ORAU report 90, a long-awaited report 

on -- the title of that I'll read. Monitoring Feasibility 

Evaluation for Exotic Radionuclides Produced by the 

Oak Ridge National Laboratory Isotopes Division. A 

long report, as I had mentioned before, wellorganized, well-written. I'll mention Joe Guido was 

the lead on that.

This report we did have in time for our Board meeting 

in Oak Ridge. It was then referred to SC&A for review 

on April 26th. Subsequently SC&A asked for some 

clarification on some items, and NIOSH has 

responded on that. 

The word I have from Jon Stiver this morning is that 

Ron Buchanan at SC&A is working on that, and it will 

be on his priority list for July. 

Mr. Katz: Thank you.

Member Roessler: That's all we have on that.

Mr. Katz: Thanks, Gen. 

Any questions?

(No audible response.)

Mr. Katz: Any other Work Group or Subcommittee 

reports?

Argonne East Update

Member Clawson: Yeah, Ted. This is Brad. I just 

wanted to mention we're having our first Argonne 

East meeting tomorrow.

Mr. Katz: Right. Thank you.
7

Member Anderson: Who's on that committee now?

Mr. Katz: I'm sorry. Who's on Argonne?

Member Anderson: Yes.

Mr. Katz: Brad and -- hold on a second.

Member Beach: Josie.

Mr. Katz: Josie, Loretta, and Gen.

Member Anderson: Okay. 

Mr. Katz: Yeah.

Member Anderson: Because that wasn't on your list, 

but I guess --

Mr. Katz: No, because nothing changed.

Member Anderson: -- no members have changed.

Mr. Katz: Yeah, no change. No changes to that 

committee. That's why.

Mr. Katz: Any other Work Groups?

Dose Reconstruction Review Subcommittee Update

Member Kotelchuck: Dave. Our Dose Reconstruction 

Review Subcommittee is scheduled to meet on 

Tuesday, July 24th. We'll be working an agenda and 

getting it out to people soon.

May I also ask was it -- were all of the suggested 

revisions in the Work Groups and Subcommittees 

approved as you suggested them?

Mr. Katz: Yeah, I think so. What I'll do is I will send 

you out an updated list, complete list, the existing as 

well as the new ones after this call. I wanted to give 

a chance because I hadn't heard from just a few 

people, like David Richardson, but I want to give you 

the rest of this month basically for any other 

comments. But otherwise, it all seems good and 

everyone seems happy with their lot. 
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Member Kotelchuck: Good.

Mr. Katz: Yeah.

Metals and Controls Update

Member Beach: And, Ted, this is Josie. I'll just give 

a really brief -- we had a meeting for Metals and 

Controls on May 3rd. There's still some work to be 

done, and I'll be giving a more in-depth report at the 

August meeting since we'll be in that area.

And I also have a question for you, Ted. Is it possible 

to do a tour of Metals and Controls while we're -- in 

August?

Mr. Katz: I'd be happy to look into that. I don't know 

if we have -- we have Greg on the line, and we also 

have the -- NIOSH on the line. I don't know if anyone 

wants to speak to what is there that might be toured 

at this point.

Member Beach: Yes, there may not be anything.

Mr. Katz: I'm not sure, but let's hear from someone 

who knows the site.

Mr. Lewis: Well, I mean, this is Greg. I haven't 

looked into it. I don't -- as far as I know there's 

nothing that could be toured, at least not -- no 

government facility. I don't know what's there in 

terms of a company-owned facility, but I'm imagining 

there wouldn't really be an opportunity to tour 

anything. I can look into it though.

Member Beach: Yeah, I suspected that, too. I just 

thought I'd ask.

Mr. Katz: Yeah, thanks, Josie. So we'll get back to 

you on that. I don't recall if we've ever actually 

toured an AEC facility, but --

Member Beach: Yeah, I didn't think so either. 

Dose Reconstruction Review Subcommittee Update 
9

Continued

Member Kotelchuck: Dave again. As the (telephonic 

interference) the Dose Reconstruction Review 

Methods Work Group, just wanted to tell people, 

particularly members of the Committee, that I plan 

with Ted to gather materials about the -- relevant to 

the Methods Committee work and send that out this 

summer for people to look over and then try to 

schedule a meeting in the fall. And we'll contact you 

later early -- probably early in the fall, or maybe 

actually later in the summer for -- to try to pick a 

date. 

And probably I think it would be valuable for our first 

Methods Working Group Committee -- Working 

Group to meet face to face after discussion of the 

materials. Maybe we'll have a telephone discussion, 

a telephone conference call and then follow up with a 

face-to-face meeting, or we may decide to do a faceto-face. We'll talk about that later in the summer and 

early fall. Okay?

Mr. Katz: Okay. That sounds good. Thanks, Dave.

Yeah, and I will get out those materials. I mean, 

you're familiar with those, Members of that Work 

Group, but I mean -- and the most important ones I 

think are Mark Griffon's report and the Board's 

discussion of Mark's report, as well as the Work 

Group's meeting over Mark's report that just 

preceded the Board meeting.

So you all have those materials, but I will send them 

out again just to make that easy in case -- for 

convenience.

Any other Work Groups that want to address the 

agenda.

Subcommittee on Procedures Update

Member Munn: This is Wanda. There are a couple 

of things that I probably would point out as I ride off 

into the sunset here. With respect to Blockson, we 
10

now have SC&A's report on the SEC issues. There's 

all that to do about overtime. You have that report, 

and at some juncture fairly soon that needs to be 

addressed so that SC&A can be properly responded 

to.

With respect to the Subcommittee on Procedures, 

you may remember that at our Oak Ridge meeting 

we were scheduled to do a -- to do three 

presentations, and because of the way our schedule 

fell out we ended up doing only two of the four, so 

that we still have OTIB-34 left over. I think 

everybody was set for it last time, but that's on the 

Board's -- yet to be presented to the full Board.

We have one issue that's been transferred from 

Fernald. Well, I guess there's actually two findings, 

Findings 17 and 19, beta correction factors, that we 

have not addressed at all. And that's on our plate. 

At the openers we had a lot of PERs. SC&A's been -

- or Kathy's been producing lot of what we need to 

address with the PERs. 

We've got PER-77, Simonds Saw. We've got -- oh, 

that's -- I think that was sent to us for review, if I 

remember correctly. PER-80 might be also a subtext 

for General Steel. We have -- there's a lot of 

interested PER-80 ones, so it's been a long time in 

coming, but probably it's just about ready to take a 

look at fairly soon. We have PER-73, Birdsboro. 52 

-- OTIB-52. PER-81, Hooker. 76, Aliquippa Forge. 

We've been anticipating that we probably would be 

needing a meeting toward the end of summer, and 

given what I see on our plate already it looks like 

that's not an appropriate thing to do. We have -- I 

would note that there are one or two other things we 

anticipate from SC&A very shortly. We have more 

than enough to be putting together a meeting right 

now. So that will be your first task with the new 

makeup of the Subcommittee.

And with that I think I've said all I need to say. That's 

what I'm leaving you. And sorry about that, but 

there's always something.
11

(Laughter.)

Mr. Katz: Thank you, Wanda. Well, there will --

there are always new procedures anyhow and there 

are -- and just -- and you know not all of those that 

she listed and -- the Board had been delivered. 

Certainly not all of them have been responded to 

from NIOSH that have been delivered. 

So, but we will -- I will work with our new Chair and 

membership for that Subcommittee and get that 

together and have a meeting. And think Wanda's 

guesstimate about timing is about right. It's 

probably going to be early fall given that we need two 

months for the Federal Register notice and so on, or 

late summer.

Member Munn: Yeah, I didn't even mention the issue 

about our sampling plan. We've had a quite a 

discussion in Procedures about whether the sampling 

-- our QA Sampling Plan is adequate. And there's 

been a lot of effort to try to identify what real 

standards are. But we -- that's still hanging and 

needs to be addressed. 

And I guess my parting comment needs to be that I 

am very, very pleased with the fact that the 

Subcommittee on Procedures has been so useful in 

its ability to get the Board reporting system put 

together, get most of the bugs worked out of it, and 

get it operable so that the entire Board and all of the 

Work Groups and Subcommittees have access to it 

and now are using it pretty heavily. And we are very 

pleased with that because I don't know how we deal 

with any of this otherwise. 

So thank you to all of the folks who have been so 

instrumental in getting that particular tool ready for 

us and functioning and in operational condition. 

Thanks.

Mr. Katz: Yeah, thank you, Wanda. And I think all 

of us second that.

Any other Work Groups, Chairs?
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(No audible response.)

Plans for the August 2018 Board Meeting

Mr. Katz: Okay then. Hearing none, then let me get 

to plans for the 2018 meeting, and some of this has 

been mentioned by a couple Chairs, some of this 

material, so -- and by LaVon, so it won't be a 

surprise, but let me just run through what I have 

right now sketched out.

We have the usuals. Following that we plan for on 

Fernald, Site Profile, to try to close out the Site Profile 

Review. There's a little bit of work on the table still, 

so we'll need a Work Group meeting first. And 

provided the material on the table, SC&A delivered a 

report very recently that NIOSH is going over on one 

issue that still needs to be worked out by NIOSH, or 

considered. And they're hard at work at that. So I'm 

hopeful that we'll have a Fernald Work Group 

meeting late July or early August. Actually we have 

much of August, if you need it, before the Board 

meeting for that. But so we have -- I have that 

sketched in. 

I also have, as LaVon mentioned, a Sandia Petition 

188. I have that in. And that looks like it could go, 

which is great. I also have procedure reviews. We 

don't have a lot of time for issues there, but we 

definitely have -- I have on there to address a variety 

of issues, as you recall, from the last Board meeting 

related to skin doses. OTIB-17, Findings 7 and 15 

and the Overarching Issue 9. I think Wanda 

mentioned these. 

So those were discussed and needed additional 

responses. And I think that's getting put together 

and hopefully will work out. And we'll take a look at 

what else Wanda mentioned, but again, we don't 

have a lot of time for that as the day is sketched out 

so far at least.

Metals and Controls. I have that on there for a full 

hour-and-a-half so that Josie can present. I know 

the petitioner has lots of thoughts, and it's a good 
13

opportunity for them to speak to the Work Group and 

the Board. So we have that the first day.

The second day I have the INL SEC petition. There's 

still the whole earlier element of the proposal to add 

a class there to get worked out. We'll need a Work 

Group meeting before, July or early August, to make 

that ready, but I don't think there's -- will be a lot of 

work left at that point to do. So I think it should get 

-- be ready for that Board meeting.

And then finally, last but not least, we have the De 

Soto presentation and discussion as well for the new 

De Soto Petition 246.

So do you have any questions about those items or 

about items that I haven't mentioned that one might 

think ought to be on the agenda?

Member Ziemer: So, Ted, we do -- this is Ziemer. 

We do have that carryover issue on OTIB-52 that you 

recently distributed the materials from Jim Neton 

relative to Dr. Richardson's question from a previous 

Board meeting that had to do with the use of -- what 

was called the Fairweather database. Do you recall 

that carryover? Is that on the agenda?

Mr. Katz: I do recall it. I don't have it on the agenda 

because I circulated it to all the Board members. It 

wasn't necessarily needing more discussion, but 

that's what I left open to you I think in my email to 

say if someone has issues they need to discuss about 

that, then we'll put that on the agenda, or we can 

handle it during the Board's work session as well. But 

I'm not certain that there -- it's left with major 

questions, because that -- the issue that David 

Richardson raised had actually already been 

discussed by the Board previously and -- or at least 

by the Work Groups and without any discomfort and 

addressed by SC&A.

So I'm not certain it needs to be on the agenda, but 

it's --

Member Ziemer: And I wasn't sure if there was an 
14

action required or whether it was just an information 

request.

Mr. Katz: Yeah, so there's -- if any Board Members 

feel like that needs to be discussed further, 

absolutely I'll put it on the agenda. Otherwise, I think 

it doesn't need to be there. 

Member Ziemer: Okay.

Mr. Katz: But that's open to you all.

Any other matters?

Member Munn: On that same vein, Ted, one of the 

things I failed to mention is the discussion that we 

had -- I'm not even sure in which venue, I believe in 

an open Board meeting, when we had a discussion 

about how we are reporting the closure of findings on 

the BRS. We had commented that it might be wise 

of us to differentiate between the Subcommittee or 

Work Group closing something and the entire Board 

closing something. I'm not sure how we were going 

to address that precisely. In most cases, with 

Procedures anyhow, we have pretty much followed 

the protocol of just saying that the Subcommittee 

closed the finding at some point. 

And then of course the gist of the discussion as I 

recall it was that we as a Subcommittee really don't 

have the authority to close these findings out, or as 

a Work Group, that they really are closed out by the 

Board. And then there was some concern about 

whether or not we needed to differentiate that more 

clearly in our closure comments, but I don't know 

whether -- I don't -- didn't have the feeling that had 

been put to bed thoroughly.

Mr. Katz: That's spot on, Wanda, but I have 

addressed that. That was a discussion at the last 

Board meeting. And I have followed up with NIOSH 

on that, and they're looking into how to get that 

done. But absolutely there needs to be a proper 

accounting of when the Board closes matters in the 

BRS.
15

Member Munn: Okay.

Mr. Katz: And we'll get that sorted out. But they're 

looking into what's been done. I'm not even sure 

whether in some cases the BRS has that accounting 

ready, but I know definite -- in many cases at least, 

and so we're following up on that and figuring out a 

plan forward for that. Thank you.

Member Munn: Yes.

Mr. Katz: Anything else?

(No audible response.)

Adjourn

Mr. Katz: Okay then. And I think that takes care of 

our agenda for today. There's no correspondence to 

discuss.

So thank you, everybody, and I'll be getting some 

emails out to you shortly.

Member Kotelchuck: Ted?

Mr. Katz: Oh, go ahead.

Member Kotelchuck: This is Dave.

Mr. Katz: Yeah?

Member Kotelchuck: The plans for the August 

coordinating, you didn't say where.

Mr. Katz: Oh, I'm so sorry. Yeah. So it is in 

Providence.

Member Kotelchuck: Okay.

Mr. Katz: It is in Providence. And we'll be getting 

the hotel information out to you as soon as we have 

a contract and --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Member Kotelchuck: Very good. Okay.
16

Mr. Katz: Yeah. Thank you for asking that, Dave.

Member Kotelchuck: Right.

Mr. Katz: Yes. 

Member Munn: And if you're going to give me the 

last word, I would like to say to each and every one 

of you you certainly will be missed, and my wish for 

all of you, your road rise up to meet you and the wind 

at your back. You all have good lives. Bye-bye.

Mr. Katz: And similar sentiments to you, Wanda.

Member Kotelchuck: Yes.

Mr. Katz: All right then. At this point I think we are 

adjourned. Thank you, everybody.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the 

record at 11:30 a.m.)